


Flaws in Our Code

by RiverWolf



Series: The Aftermath of Chaos [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 14:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10833513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverWolf/pseuds/RiverWolf
Summary: The birth of an Empire is an unstable thing, and no one knows that better than clones. At the end of the Clone Wars, they hoped to find peace, but their return to the core worlds brought new anxiety to those they'd been bred to protect. Stitch and his smuggler friend Skyla are part of an underground railroad that helps young clones begin again, but peace is fleeting, and new wars are raging on invisible fronts. For the young clones in Stitch's care, learning to find purpose in chaos is the only remaining path to peace.





	Flaws in Our Code

He heard the ship coming before he could see it through the hazy industrial sunset. Suddenly aware of the tightness in his knees, Stitch stood for the first time in what felt like ages, stretching his legs. The fusion lantern that balanced on the crate beside him flickered. It would need to be charged again soon. He hoped desperately that the power would come back on soon -- they'd been without it for almost five rotations, and even an industrial anthill like this one could experience severe temperature drops during the long nights.

For now, the failing fusion lantern would have to do. He scooped up a small cloth bag that had been carefully left beside his blaster, realizing as he did so that he had no memory of how it had gotten there. Skyla was out all hours of the night, but she never missed a payment, even if she couldn't be there to deliver it in person. He slipped the pouch into the deep pocket of his pants and returned the blaster to its place in his belt holster and made his way to the warehouse door, picking his way across the rubble-littered floor as he left the sphere of light cast by the fusion lantern.

On the landing pad outside, he could hear the landing cycle of a ship slowly powering down. Stitch rested his hand on the grip of his blaster. This delivery was going to cost them, and he was sure the bounty hunters making it would rather collect on it quickly rather than risking any entanglements. Still, he felt calmer with the blaster where it was designed to be, right underneath his gently curled, gloved hand. A pneumatic hiss signaled the descent of the ship's boarding ramp. Stitch pulled the hood of his battered cloak over his head and stepped silently out into the gloom.

"You're late."

A helmeted figure not very unlike those he once knew so well made its way down the ramp, outlined by the glow of the ship's displays that had not been powered down.

"You're lucky we're here at all! We were nearly boarded entering the system, you know what our procedures are."

Stitch stiffened, trying not to dwell on the deliveries that had never made it. The thought made him feel sick.

"I also know what we're paying you to make these deliveries _undamaged._ Bring me the crates, we'll deal, and you can be on your way."

The helmeted figure nodded, retreating into the ship's darkened cargo bay. He emerged moments later, flanked by three of his crew, each one guiding a repulsor sled carrying a long, narrow crate. Their leader approached as the others offloaded the crates, holding out his hand expectantly.

"Not so fast," Stitch growled. "You know the drill. Open them."

The bounty hunter paused for a moment, unreadable, and slowly nodded to his crew.

"As you wish."

The lids of all four crates clattered to the surface of the landing pad. Stitch took a step forward and felt himself turn stony. They were so _young_. Each crate contained a clone, but his heart clenched as he approached them. Their faces were unnaturally pale and gaunt, and a fine layer of crystalline ice dusted their painfully angular features. He rounded on the bounty hunters, his grip tightening on his blaster.

"What _happened_ to them?! They're freezing!"

"They were in the cargo bay, the climate controls aren't reliable in there. They're alive, and that was our end of the bargain! Do you want them or not?"

The clone nearest to Stitch jerked violently, but before Stitch could reach his side, the bounty hunter stepped between them, shoving Stitch back with an armored jab to the chest that left him breathless.

"Not before we get paid! Do we have a deal or not?"

Stitch fought back the impulse to kill the man that stood between him and the injured clones and drew the bag out of his pocket, ramming it into his expectant hands much more forcefully than he'd intended. The man weighed the pouch slowly and carefully.

"A pleasure doing business with you. Give my best to Skyla. I trust this partnership will continue to be... mutually beneficial."

Stitch pushed past the man and dropped to his knees, fishing his diagnostic scanner out of a pouch at his waist. The clone nearest to him was awake, but his eyes were unfocused and his breathing was slow and shallow. He was vaguely aware of the smugglers retreating back onto their ship, but there would be other opportunities to address their negligence. Right now, the only thing that mattered was triaging these men as quickly as possible. He ran the old scanner over each of them, making a mental note of the diagnostic readouts as he moved from crate to crate. Their sedatives were wearing off, and three of the four were shivering. One sat bolt upright, leaned over the side of his crate, and vomited. _Hypothermia and hibernation sickness._ He returned quickly to the first crate, frowning. This one was still, and that concerned him most.

"Hey, kid, can you hear me?"

The clone's eyes fluttered, his voice slurred weakly as he tried to speak. Stitch didn't wait for further response. Clutching the repulsor sled's handle, he swung the crate back towards the warehouse. The clone who had been vomiting over the edge of his crate was sitting up now, his face a slightly warmer shade of grey. Stitch caught his attention.

"Kid! Can you stand? I'm gonna need your help."

He looked surprised for a moment, as if he was startled to be addressed, but nodded quickly in response.

"Great! Get your brothers and follow me, okay? This one's gonna need my attention right away. Just get them inside and off the landing pad as quick as you can!”

The younger clone was out of the crate and on his feet, drawing one hand up to his temple in a shaky salute.

"Yes, sir!"

Stitch felt a pang of something that felt like guilt.

"No, don't-- don't worry about that, my name's Stitch. Just Stitch. You got a name?"

The clone frowned, silent. Stitch knew the look on his face painfully well, but it was a conversation for another time. Right now, his focus was on the crate beneath his own hands, and time was of the essence.

"Never mind, just grab them and get them inside! Follow me!"

Stitch took off at a run, dodging pieces of debris that littered the landing pad's walkway as he made his way back to the warehouse. In another era, this had been a thriving industrial shipping hub, patching goods from all over the galaxy to other Outer Rim planets. Trade embargoes had all but ceased the flow of goods that had come through this facility by official means. Now everything was traded in the marketplaces that filled the dingy streets of the planet's core cities, supplied by smugglers and pirates and the Force only knew what else. The building had long since been looted for anything that the locals had deemed valuable, and the building had been condemned. Fortunately, razing it had not been a top priority for the powers that controlled the small but teeming world. Stitch stayed out of local politics, but Skyla, the smuggler who'd been working with him to transport refugee clones away from the Empire's control, kept an eye on things and ensured the building remained abandoned and largely ignored.

Reaching the main entrance, he disabled the security system and slid the door open. The younger clone wasn't too far behind him, but he was struggling to push the other two unwieldy crates across the platform on his own. The clone in the crate he was guiding groaned softly as Stitch shoved the sled over the threshold. The kid would figure it out on his own. He had to get this one warmed up, fast.

Stitch's makeshift med bay wasn't much to look at, but it was surprisingly well stocked considering the circumstances. He'd been there long enough to hoard a few basic necessities, and Skyla had been instrumental in securing anything he needed that was less readily available in public marketplaces. Supplies were limited and shipments were frustratingly irregular, but Stitch made do. He had no other choice.

He lifted the motionless clone carefully from the crate and deposited him on a vacant bedroll, the knot in his stomach tightening when he realized how easily he'd been able to pick him up. The clone was wearing threadbare work clothes that looked like they'd been made for someone much bulkier than he was. Stitch checked his vitals, noting that his pulse was weak, and his temperature was drastically low. Rummaging through a case of implements he'd left beside the beds, Stitch dug out an old oxygen mask, hooking it up to an air humidifier Skyla had brought back after one of her lengthy solo missions in a low-atmosphere desert. Hypothermia was something of a specialty of his after a lengthy stint on an ice world back during the Clone Wars, but he hadn't encountered it much since then. He knew enough to know that this was a severe case, and that improperly warming a patient could be fatal. The humidifier would bring the clone's airways back to the right temperature, warming him from the core. Stitch placed the mask carefully and started the airflow, his eyes scanning his available resources as he did so. He kept a supply of thermal blankets on hand, and he reached for one now to carefully wrap his patient as he watched his temperature on the scanner.

Slowly but surely, the numbers ticked upwards. Stitch sighed, wiping sweat from his forehead. The image of the four young clones freezing in their cargo hold crates wouldn't stop nagging at him as he tried to focus his attention on his medical readouts. _Cargo. That's all they are to these people._ He could feel himself clenching his jaw, thinking of the ways he'd tried to keep his brothers warm in that bitter winter. His squadmates had a particular hatred for the cold, particularly Sammich. He'd done his best to keep it at bay then, too. But at least back then they'd been fighting for something. There'd been a purpose to all of it, and somehow that had taken at least some of the edge off of the suffering. The fight was different now, and each of the survivors was in it for their own reasons. Stitch sighed, pushing the ever-present ache that accompanied the memories of his former squad out of mind for now. He couldn't change the way things had unfolded after the Orders came down, but he could at least ensure these boys had the chance to discover purposes of their own.

"We're all inside now si-- uh, Stitch."

The young clone Stitch had put in charge of his unconscious brothers was standing at the entrance to the makeshift medbay.

"Good work, kid. Come over here and get under one of these thermal blankets, I'll take them from here."

He brought the unconscious clones closer to the fusion lantern, lifting them out of their crates and laying them side-by-side. Peeling back the thin clothes they wore, Stitch scanned the vicious bruising across their ribs. _Potentially fractured_. He sighed, pulling thermal sheets over them carefully. He'd seen injuries much worse in his time on duty, but there was something deeply vulnerable about these clones that left him feeling nauseous as he placed bacta patches over their battered skin.They were cold and still under the effects of the long hibernation, but they'd be okay with warmth and rest.

"My number is CT-88-9091," the young clone muttered, his eyes still fixed on his unconscious brothers. "They used to call me Rivet."

"Are these your squadmates, Rivet?"

Stitch knew the answer to his question before he'd even seen Rivet's quiet nod, the pieces falling into place as he prepared bacta patches. He remembered the file on this particular group because it had shaken him from his carefully maintained political isolation and drawn his attention back to a place he'd been desperate to leave behind. They'd been victims of a riot that had rocked Coruscant's lower levels, one that Stitch had watched unfold over the Holonet News broadcasts with a deep ache in his chest, horrified but unable to look away. After the war was declared over, many felt that clones had outlived their usefulness. He realized something profoundly painful as he watched the riots engulf his brothers: they were never meant to come back from the war. What use did a society that was grasping for peace after years of destruction have for former soldiers living in their midst? After all, wasn't making war what clones had been designed to do?

The youngest of the clones stayed in the cities in spite of it all, determined to play their part and live out their purpose. They'd never seen combat, but they still believed in the roles they'd been designed to fill. The new Empire used them as peacekeepers for a while, incentivizing loyalty with medication that promised to slow their accelerated aging and give them a normal life, but integration programs were costly, and the Empire was nothing if not efficient. When citizen mistrust boiled over into full-blown conflict, the Empire remained silent. Stitch watched helplessly from the edge of the galaxy as his brothers were overwhelmed, beaten, and eventually, forgotten.

Rivet and his brothers had survived a particularly vicious anti-clone riot with the help of a small group of sympathetic civilians with whom Skyla worked closely. Stitch knew next to nothing about the refugee networks Skyla communicated with to transport clones to safety. He preferred to focus on his part in the chain, desperately avoiding the intrusive memories of his own departurethat haunted him even here. The blaster burn on his chest had healed since then, but it was the face that had been on the other side of the barrel that kept him awake at night.He could never go back. He'd made his choice, and it had cost him almost everything. The recognized the desperate fear in the way Rivet watched over his unconscious brothers. They were all he had left, and he could empathize with that more than he cared to admit to himself.

"They're going to be fine, kid. The four of you took a beating back there, but you're all going to be fine. They just need rest, they've got to wait out the hibernation sickness. You don't look so great yourself, you should try and get some sleep, too."

Rivet squirmed deeper into the thermal blanket he'd wrapped himself in, releasing some of the tension in his shoulders. Stitch dimmed the fusion lantern and checked on the clone wearing the oxygen mask one more time. His body temperature was returning to normal. Stitch could feel the adrenaline of the moment subsiding at last, leaving a deep exhaustion in its place as he stood up to leave.

"Stitch...?"

He paused at the edge of the makeshift medbay's plastic sheeting walls and glanced over his shoulder. Rivet was sitting up on his bedroll, his expression tense and unreadable.

"What is it, Rivet?"

"What happens now...?"

"We get you new papers and new identities, and get you somewhere you can start a new occupation," Stitch responded quietly. "I know a forger who specializes in relocating clones, he'll be working on your documentation. Until your papers are ready and we've arranged your transportation out of here, you'll stay here and heal. We don't have much, but Skyla makes sure we have rations and shipments of medical supplies. You'll be safe here."

Rivet was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on the ground.

"Thank you for all of your kindness... but... but what I meant to ask was, what  _really_ happens now? With... people like us? All of these resources, time, money... all of it just to keep us alive? Stitch... the war is over. There's nothing left for us... we're just clones..."

Stitch felt Rivet's words settle onto his chest like a ton of durasteel. He paused, reminded himself to breathe.

"Maybe so. I won't lie to you kid, there's nothing simple or easy about what we're doing. So many of our brothers lost their lives in the war, and suddenly, those deaths seem to make a lot more sense than the way we're living now. There was a purpose coded in our blood. That war is over now, and I won't tell you not to feel lost... sometimes I still do. But if there's one thing I learned from fighting clankers, it's that the ability to adapt... to rewrite your own code... well... it's what kept us alive. It isn't easy when you're programmed to follow orders, especially... after what we've done. But our brothers gave everything to bring peace to the Republic. We deserve to know what it feels like. And I believe that's worth fighting for."

Rivet closed his eyes, processing. For a moment, the ambient sounds of the medbay and the congested skylanes above blended together, surrounding Stitch and the men under his protection with the pulse of the planet's living Force. Stitch smiled, feeling the vibrations of the sound somewhere deep within him. Purpose from chaos. Some things hadn't changed at all.  He returned to Rivet's side and eased him gently back down onto his bedroll, feeling tightened muscles give out in exhaustion under his gentle guidance.

"Get some rest, brother. We're all in this together. Just take it one day at a time."


End file.
